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How on Earth does someone discover that? What possible series of events or hypotheses would lead someone to perform such an experiment?
by openasocket 8y ago
How on Earth does someone discover that? What possible series of events or hypotheses would lead someone to perform such an experiment?
- ct520 8y agoMakes you wonder what other type of screwed up failed tests people did that never were shared.
- Buttons840 8y agoUgh, don't wonder that too hard. In this case, reality is probably worse than what you can come up with in your own imagination.
- shoes_for_thee 8y agoperhaps it was known that hCG is present in the urine of pregnant women. and also that hCG induces ovulation in frogs. If injecting frogs with urine is cheaper than other methods of detecting signaling horomones.. well, there ya go.
- giarc 8y agoI feel like chromatography for hCG would predate all these things.
- thfuran 8y agoAs a cheap clinical test?
- golergka 8y agoThe more I understand about science actually works, the more I can't see any reason for someone from 18th century or before not to believe in magic. Especially if he actually did experiments that would confirm this kind of connection - alchemist theories just look like the most logical explanation of such phenomena. (If you don't believe me, just ask Newton).
- lkrubner 8y agoWhy is that everyone in the village died of smallpox, except for the milkmaids, who never got sick? Is this some kind of milkmaid magic? Or is there something in the biographies of each milkmaid that causes them to become... ah, what is the right word? It's almost as if they are, ah, "immune" to smallpox? Is that possible? It's almost as if they get cine (aid) from the cows (vacca). One wonders if we could deliberately give this vacca-cine to people?
- swombat 8y agoThank you for this. Didn’t know this was the etymology of vaccine!
- bonzini 8y agoIt's not (the cow part is though; vaccine simply means "from cow").
- dunefox 8y agoNo, they're witches!
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoDo you have a source on the etymology? I've searched but couldn't find anything. Genuinely curious.
- typothrowaway 8y agoAt least wikipedia seems to partially agree (on the cow part), with citations I couldn't verify: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinia#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowpox
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI meant on the etymology of cine / aid. Must have valued out when I wrote my previous comment.
- jforman 8y agoIf I remember correctly frogs were an early model organism for studying fertilization because their eggs are large. Seems reasonable that would extend to early hormone secretion post-fertilization.
- Simple_Guy 8y agoWouldn't chickens be better, then?
- sowbug 8y agoChickens are big, messy, and smelly. They're also painful when they're mad.
- randall 8y agoThis needs to be an episode of radiolab.
- detaro 8y agoThere already was some understanding of hormones, and one of the hormones used in the body to regulate pregnancies is also present in urine. Similar mechanisms had been found in other animals, and it turned out they were similar enough to allow the human variant to trigger processes in animal bodies. Mice and rabbits had been used before, so there was logic to testing if it transferred to the frogs too.
- ftcHn 8y agoMy grandfather used cane toads for pregnancy tests in Australia. https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/dr-karl-need-to-know/2018/06/how-aussie-scientists-used-cane-toads-to-confirm-pregnancies/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/dr-karl-need-t...
- giardini 8y agoOP said> "...It's thought by some that ..." openasocket says>"How on Earth does someone discover that? What possible series of events or hypotheses would lead someone to perform such an experiment? Whoa! No one said that anyone "discovered that", or that "such an experiment" was performed. The article merely said that someone speculated that possibility. To further speculate on hearsay of mere speculation is not wise.
- busyant 8y agoI don't know why, but this conversation reminds me of a guy I used to work with. The guy had studied animal husbandry and he told my co-workers and me that if you inserted a foreign object (about the size of a quarter) up into the reproductive area of a hen at _just the right time_, the hen would often lay an egg with the foreign object trapped inside.[1] Our business plan: * get a bunch of hens * have guys mail $500 + engagement rings to us. * insert engagement ring into hen * ship back ring-encased egg to the dudes. * dudes ask girlfriends to cook an omelette... I still wonder how anyone figured that out. [1] There might have been surgery involved. Can't remember.
- cm2187 8y agoIs that how they manufacture kinder eggs?
- bdamm 8y agoProper kinder eggs are illegal in the USA so there's a sizable portion of this readership that won't get that joke.
- surge 8y agoBut the YT videos of people opening proper kinder eggs are all the rage amongst toddlers in the US, so at least many parents will.
- lugg 8y agoI like how the USA is willing to ban something so silly to protect children but gun control is offlimits. Like what.
- gotocake 8y agoPutting aside the bait, the whole story with a Kinder Eggs has become a tale told to illustrate a point, but the story itself is nonsense. The US didn’t specifically ban them, they simply fall under a (sensible) pre-existing law and no one gives enough of a crap to change it. Simply put it’s banned to sell candy with something inedible inside of it. This law goes back to the 1930’s and frankly, makes a lot of sense in the general case. Besides, slightly modified kinder eggs are sold in the US.
- tclancy 8y agoDon’t look at me, I’m still trying to figure out how the frog makes a person pregnant at a distance.
- rangibaby 8y agoIt reminds me of this: https://twitter.com/AndrewNadeau0/status/848023384638226432 https://twitter.com/AndrewNadeau0/status/848023384638226432